


an easy mission

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Cassian Andor-centric, F/M, Flowers, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Misunderstandings, One Shot, POV Cassian Andor, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:01:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22706626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: On Endor, Cassian undertakes a mission to "rescue" Leia from the Ewoks.Things don't go as planned.
Relationships: Cassian Andor & Kes Dameron, Cassian Andor & Leia Organa, Cassian Andor/Leia Organa
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7





	an easy mission

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cassandor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassandor/gifts).



> Cassandor, I promised you Ewoks. Due to the slight delay (HAH) your Ewok promise has accumulated interest, and now you have a standalone Ewok fic.

Some waiting is necessary in war, Cassia knows. Sometimes a spy needs to hide in the shadows a little longer, or a ship delay takeoff just for a moment. Both times to save a life, to save a mission.

Other waits, like this one, are near-torture, with each moment taking an hour to pass. Cassian crouches near the comm unit, half-hidden by Endor’s dense foliage. Near him, Kes paces. “Any word?” Kes asks, his eyebrows knit together in concern.

It’s something Cassian can’t allow himself, that indulgence of being concerned, of pacing, of showing any emotion beyond cool calculation. Even now, with only days before the largest battle the rebellion has ever undertaken, Cassian knows he has to remain calm.

Even if Leia Organa is missing.

She’s only one small part of the mission here, Cassian tells himself. Her survival is important, of course, as is every soldier’s, but Leia would be the first to remind him that she doesn’t deserve any special treatment. That she doesn’t need someone else worrying about her.

It’s something she’s told him multiple times, and if he’s honest with himself, something Cassian has said to her about himself. And, worse, perhaps, meant it.

Maybe they had both lost too much to ever want to be counted as a loss by someone else. Maybe they both knew the weight a heart had to carry, when a loved one was lost, and they wished to save others that burden.

Cassian wonders, privately, how Kes and Shara could be so strong. How they could go into battle not only leaving their a lover behind, (since one was a pilot and the other more suited to boots-on-the-ground-work) but a child, as well.

He almost, almost considers asking Kes, before the man clamps a strong hand on Cassian’s narrow shoulder. “Message incoming!” he half-whispers, half-yells.

The audio crackles, faintly. _Organa has been found. Repeat. Organa has been located._

“Where?” Kes asks.

Cassian is mildly embarrassed he hadn’t managed the question first.

_She has found a village of local inhabitants. Ewoks, to be precise._

His first thought is relief.

His second is that would certainly complicate the plans Solo had sketched out for the ground options.

His third thought is one he voices out-loud to Kes. “I really hope someone told her they’re carnivorous”

\----

“You sure this is going to work?” Kes asks, poking the still-roasting duui deer with a stick.

“Mhm.” Cassian finishes the last knot on the simple braided rope bag he’d made to hold the smoked meat. It's the sort of bag he's made countless times, for a hundred missions like this. Even if there never really had been a mission like this before. Spies didn't often get tasked with rescuing princesses. Even if neither of them truly held those titles any more.

“We just show up, hand over the meat and get the Prin-er, Le- er the Commander?”

“Ewoks value food above all.” Cassian replies. “They were the same way on Fest. My father would trade with them.”

“Wasn’t he a--”

“He was a mechanic, first,” Cassian cuts him off, but kindly. It hurts, right now, sitting next to a young-Rebel-soldier-turned-young-father, to be reminded of his own father’s conviction for justice, and how that fight had cost him his life.

The main reason Cassian took this mission, though he admitted it only to Kaytu, was to do his best to bring Poe back his father. To spare him the loss that Cassian had faced, when he was barely older than the round-faced boy he’d held, only weeks before.

“Can’t believe how easy hunting is here.” Kes slides the meat off the spit when it's done, transferring it carefully to Cassian’s bag.

“Ewoks are too small to take down a large deer alone, and too noisy to do so together. But they can be dangerous. At least, the ones on Fest were.” Only newcomers to the icy planet were foolish enough to discount the Ewoks, based on their small stature. Only newcomers would fail to notice their teeth were as sharp as their spears.

Newcomers didn’t last long on Fest.

“Think they could help us take down some troopers?”

Cassian lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “If it comes to that, I would be glad to have them on my side.” He would be happy to have anyone on his side, if it meant that tomorrow when the battle begins, the Empire will finally fall for good.

Kes nods. Just as he is about to speak, the comm buzzes again. BEEP. Beep. BEEEEP.

A message in code, paging Kes. His eyes widen. “I should--”

“Go," Cassian tells him. “I’ve got this. It will be easy. Leia and I will be back by sunset.”

“Sunset?” Kes waggles his eyebrows. Somehow, even in a time like this, he can joke. “Sounds romantic.”

“It’s _not.”_

He and Leia are… friends. No. That was too generous. They are comrades. The same as he is with Shara, or with any other soldier in the Rebellion.

But no other soldier in the Rebellion makes his heart do such a funny stutter when they smile.

“By sunset,” Cassian mutters to himself, slinging the bag over his back and heading deep into the woods.

* * *

About six hours later, Cassian not only had realized that the Ewoks on Fest were just as smart, and just as dangerous as the ones back home, but that his carefully laid plan had already gone deeply awry.

FInding the Ewoks, or rather, an Ewok scout had proved easy. That much had been true, from what he'd said to Kes.

He’d located Kneesaa, a young tan female, had been accompanied by two archers who both wore skull-and-teeth-necklaces. Cassian had found that the Ewokese he knew from Fest worked well enough to offer the meat in exchange for the humanoid they’d found.

Kneesaa, however, had been more interested in asking Cassian what his favorite colors were, how he knew Wuu-Leia (a name he realized translated to beautiful Leia, and a name he both couldn’t deny and couldn’t say without blushing) and why he was looking for her. After all, Kneesaa had added, Wuu-Leia was very happy in their village, in her new home. “She lives here now,” Kneesaa says. “She is my friend.”

Trust Leia to befriend even a suspicious, carnivorous Ewok.

“She, uh,” Cassian quickly comes up with something close to the truth. “She left this behind.”

He plunges his hand in his pocket to retrieve a simple carved wooden bracelet. There had been a good amount of deadtime yesterday in the shadows of the great trees, waiting for further instruction. He’d tried hard to blend in with the other soldiers, and that meant staying busy with something other than adding additional missions to his battle agenda.

So he’d taken up a bit of whittling. Not that he planned to give it to Leia. That would have been… utterly foolish. Of course. But maybe he might have left it by her quarters or in her pocket or…

Lobbed it at her head? No that wouldn’t do. The others had all been making simple crafts or writing notes to their loved ones. He’d simply followed suit.

Not that Leia was a loved one, of course.

Just a comrade.

What had he been _thinking_ anyway?

Now, he holds the bracelet out with a flat palm. “It is hers. I need to give it back.”

“Ahh.” Kneesaa nods. “First. You must do something for me.”

“Uh. Of course.” It seems the meat hadn’t been enough. “Name it.”

“Nuv lufti,” she says with a clear, strong voice.

Her two guards gasp. One asks, “Nuv luufi ota treekthin?”

She nods. “Nuv luufti.”

Cassian knew some of the words, knew they were sending him on a mission… but for what, and why, he wasn’t sure. Ewok ways, he knows, even from Fest, were never fully documented, as they had a bad habit of _eating_ any anthropologies who came near. However, he’d worked with enough local groups to know he needed to follow as he was told. So, he let the Ewoks lead him deeper and deeper into the forest, until they reached a vast, ancient tree.

“At the top,” Kneesaa says. “You will find pink flowers.”

Ah. So luufi did mean flower here, as well.

“You bring two back. One for me. One for you. Then, we take you to Luu-Leia.

Cassian knows better to ask any more questions. He knows better than to even think about how arduous the climb would be. Instead, he simply nodded, thanked the Ewok, and set down all his extra gear. Then, he got started on the climb, reaching up for the next branch, and then, the next.

Although the height of the tree is dying, Cassian soon finds that the actual work of moving from branch to branch is not the worst climb he’s ever done. Or rather, it is the first climb he had done in a long, long time, thanks to a dislike of heights after one long, hard mission on a sandy shore, lightyears from him.

But this climb, this climb is different. The stakes are different. The feeling of living bark, not cold metal, in his grasp and hope in his heart is different.

Regardless, his climbing skills prove to still be strong. Which is both good, as it gives him a better chance of surviving and terrible, because it lets his mind wander.

And as it has for the past few months, his brain kindly decided to replay his last interaction with Leia.

They’d been on a mission together. They’d survived a dangerous fire-fight with stormtroopers, had no casualties on their side, and collected the needed intelligence.

Afterward, they’d had a moment alone, in the empty hull of his U-Wing.

He’d told her she fought well. That she was an excellent translator. That she was a damn good shot.

It was more or less the same words he always told her.

_Well done. Excellent work. Thank you._

Why were those words so easy to say and others so hard?

Why hadn’t he ever been able to say “would you like to grab a cup of caff sometime?”

With that thought still dwelling in his mind, Cassian finally reaches the top of the tree. The blooms there are lovely, lovely enough perhaps for the Ewoks to give them such a meaningful name.

_Love Flower._

Poetic, to be sure, but perhaps a little too fancy for just a simple flower.

Regardless, Cassian selects two, tucks them inside his jacket, then begins the slow descent down the tree.

\---

When he is only a few branches down from the top, his lapel comm buzzes. "Cass?" It's Kes, the only one who's brave enough to call him that. "You all right? Hanging in there?"  
  


"Could say that," Cassian grunts, carefully dropping to a branch thick enough for him to stand on. One false step, though, and it's a long way down.

"Got your princess?"

"She's not mine."

"Suuuure. You know, when I wanted Shara to, you know, realize what a stud she was missin' out on, I gave her some food. Cooked up some empanadas, some cakes, some..."

"Kes?" Cassian asks with a strained voice. This really wasn't the right time for either the chat or the list of food. Cassian's own stomach grumbled as he thought of the list. It had been a while since breakfast. But he had to get Leia home by sunset.

"Yeah?"

"Now's not the time for advice. Are you safe?" that was all that mattered. That and, "is Shara all right?"

"Course. Han just needed my help moving some barricades into place."

"Right." Trust Solo to make a mess of things. That man probably needed help to put his vest on right-side out. "I'll call when I can."

"Sure thing. Over and out."

With the silence, Cassian is once again able to focus on the downward climb, which also means he's again able to fixate on the sheer difficulty of what he wants to ask Leia. How could words come so easily to him in so many other situations, and in this one, fail him?

“Would you like to grab caff sometime?” he asks the empty air, practicing for an occasion he doubts will ever come. He'd rather climb ten more trees like this than look Leia in the eye and try again to ask her for caff.

“The caff isn’t terrible here. We could--”

He’s so distracted that he nearly misses a branch and hangs, one handed, from the tree. Below him, Kneesaa howls in concern.

“I’m all right!” he tries to assure her.

Why would a single flower matter so much to them? And worse, how could he ever admit to the Rebellion that he broke an arm fetching a flower of all things? He had to be careful. Had to keep his thoughts in the moment.

With his determination set, Cassian scaled down the rest of the tree.

\---

Kneesaa had been overjoyed to see him, tackling him in a warm, fuzzy embrace that nearly crushed the flowers. Then, she inspected both, deemed them satisfactory, and led him to the villagem which turned out to be a shockingly short distance away. He'd thought the flowers might have been rare, or remote, not on the outskirts of their home.

“If I may ask,” Cassian begins, just as the brightly lit wooden village comes into view. It reminds him, strikingly, of the villages on Fest, all hand-carved and interwoven with the natural surroundings. Perhaps the Festians had borrowed what the Ewoks had already done, when they arrived on the planet. “What will you do with the flowers?”

“You give the flower to her. She takes it. Sniffs. Aaaah!” Kneesaa mimed breathing in a pleasant scent. “Then… then…”

“Mookies!” says another Ewok. “Chuck-chuck mookies!”

More Ewoks gathered by the gates of the village, as if alerted by another scout. Some brought torches, others, spears. But at the start of the chant, they all gasp. Kneesaa picks up the chant, louder than the rest. Others follow, until there is a roaring wave of noise before him.

“Mookies! Mookies!”

Cassian blinks. Had he just… He knew that word! He just… hadn’t ever expected to hear it in relation to this mission. Rather, he'd been used to hearing it around Ewok families, in their homes. “Kneesaa, I didn’t… when you asked for the flower… I…” Didn’t realize he’d been agreeing to _quite_ such a large undertaking.

But his protests die in his throat as the sea of Ewoks in front of him part and Leia stands in front of him.

Her hair is down, and she had changed into a simple brown dress, hand-sewn with clear adoration for her. Without the trappings of state, or the armor of duty, she looks so... happy. She truly is wuu-Leia, he thinks. Beautiful Leia. Soft in a way she hadn’t allowed herself to be in so long. Elegant, more so than ever, with flowers in her hair and a light in her eyes.

“Cassian?” she asks. “What…”

“I…” Words. He needs words. “You’re smart. You’re here.” Well. That hadn't been quite what he'd been going for.

“Thank you?” she tilts her head.

Kneesaa pushes at Cassian’s leg. “Give it to her!”

“Not yet,” Cassian hisses back, in Ewokese, somehow intensely reminded of all his dealings with Shara Bey, his self-appointed big sister.

“You speak the language?” Leia asks. “Could you ask them if… if they’ll evacuate? Cassian, we can’t let the Empire hurt them.”

Even in the moment, with so much else on his mind, Cassian feels his own heart soften at Leia’s concern. She is so good at putting others first, just as Bail Organa had.

“I will, Leia. I promise.”

“LUUUUUFIIIIIIIII” Kneesaa whispers in a way that was neither subtle nor quiet.

“What’s that?” Leia pushes the hair away from her face and off her shoulder. Suddenly Cassian forgets every word in every language for a moment, as his eyes travel down the smooth curve of her neck. She is utterly beautiful. More than any word could say. More than any gift could show. “Cassian?

“I…” He takes a deep breath. This is all a misunderstanding. They’d clear it up later. “I have a flower for you.”

But Kneesaa tugs on his arm, pointing to herself, then to her ear. He drops down to a knee, assuming she might try slightly harder to whisper. “Ask. You ask. Not give the flower.”

Right. Of course. He should have assumed that.

His face heats, turning a shade of red he is very glad he can’t see, as he stands. Leia looks baffled. Beautiful, still, of course, but baffled. “I want to ask you a question, Leia, and you don’t have to say yes. I mean. You do. For right now. So we can get out of here. But, you don’t have to… I mean…”

With a trembling hand, he retrieves the nearly crushed flower from his jacket pocket. “It means… it…”

“YOU MARRY HIM!” a small, brown Ewok yells. “MARRY HIIIIIIM.”

“Hush, Wicket!” Kneesaa snaps, just as it seems the Ewoks might start chanting that. If that was to occur, Cassian figures he’d simply evaporate into dust from sheer embarrassment.

“But--”

“Shhh!”

There is now a sparkle of delight brighter than starlight in her eyes. Casian hurries to explain, switching to Festian, since apparently some of the Ewoks know more than a little Basic. “Instead of that,,” Cassian whispered. “I’d like to ask you--”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t even say it.”

“Well, then, hurry up.”

He takes the request all too literally, his words a hurried tumble. “Wouldyougetcafwithme”

Leia laughed, taking the flower in one hand. She leaned up on her tiptoes to kiss his scruffy cheek. “I told you I’d say yes.”

Cassian blinks. His hand touches his cheek. Had she just…

All his waiting, all his fears, all suddenly melt away. Instead, he turns to face her, finding her smiling. Smiling without fear of the future, without any wish for him to forget about her. “I thought you’d never ask,” she says.

“I thought you’d never say yes,” he blurts out. “Unless it’s just because---” of the Ewoks? of the strange accidental proposal? Of it being the day before a battle?

Leia puts her free hand on his neck, pulling him down, gently, so their noses bump. The flower in her hand smells sweet, like a distant memory of home. Cassian’s breath catches. “Is this enough clarification for you?” Leia asks, but before he has time to answer, kisses him firmly on the lips.

Cassian feels for a moment that the whole galaxy is spinning faster around him, that he is floating without gravity, that everything is suddenly changed and yet, everything is the same.

He understands now, as he holds her close, deepening the kiss, how Kes and Shara can fight in separate battles, despite what they risk losing. It is not, in fact, a risk at all. Their love makes them stronger, makes them braver. He climbed a tree, climbed far higher than he had ever since Scarif, without a second thought for Leia. He did so much, just to make sure she is safe.

Together, he realizes, they have so much more to fight for, not more to lose.

He doesn’t think he’ll have much of a problem finding the words to tell her that.

All around them, the Ewoks chant “Mookies! Chuck-chuck mookies!”

“What are they saying?” Leia asked, turning with a smile.

“Uh. They are wishing us happiness. Much happiness.” A loose translation perhaps, but maybe it would work. Or at least, work long enough to get Leia home.

“Awful lot of wishing for just one cup of caff…” Leia raises an eyebrow.

“Perhaps we should make it two, then.” Cassian smiled at her. When she smiled back, he bent and kissed her forehead. In the distance, he notices that the sky is now streaked with orange, soft pink and deep ruby, a brilliant medley of colors.

On Fest, a red sky at night had been a sign of joy and good things to come.

On Fest, a man gave a woman pink flowers before he asked to court her.

Cassian had never considered that perhaps the Festians had borrowed the tradition from another’s tradition.

Now, he realizes that he had told Kes the truth. That, in some ways, this would be an easy mission.

That he would have Leia home by sunset.

Because wherever she was, he was home.

**Author's Note:**

> Mookies=babies.  
> All ewokese from http://www.completewermosguide.com/ewokese.html  
> Comments welcome!


End file.
